Drawn Into Descent – The Endless Endeavour

When an outsider thinks of metal music, the words that pop in mind are violence, death, satanic, ugly. While some of these words apply to certain branches of the genre, a stranger can’t conceive the fact that words like emotion, nature, melancholy, beautiful, uplifting can also be associated with this extreme style of music. These sort of antitheses make up one of the reasons I like metal so much and I tend to appreciate bands that take the abrasive music and pour their souls in it to create something elegant, that burrows deep in your heart. In short, I described what DRAWN INTO DESCENT did on their sophomore album, “The Endless Endeavour”.

DRAWN INTO DESCENT is a four piece atmospheric black metal band from Belgium that formed in 2013. They released their debut in 2015 and now, they entered the Avantgarde Music rooster to put out their second offering of emotionally loaded songs, just in time for the thawing of the forests.

“The Endless Endeavour” is comprised of 5 compositions that make up for 45 minutes of emotive playtime. The first track, “Dystopia” wastes no time pulling punches and dives right into the action with a furious assault of blast beats, before slowing down a bit when the vocals make an appearance. The vocals mostly consist of piercing wails, more common to depressive black metal, but I for one think it suits the atmosphere well. The opener is not really light-hearted and gives a feeling of prolonged winter, but the middle of the album changes this. The three central songs are melancholic but also harbor a feeling of peculiar hopefulness, despite their titles. They induce a sentiment of anticipation for something that we waited a really long time for. The closing piece though goes back to the roots and with that, I mean that it is similar in tone with the first one. I think of it like a shake on our consciousness that brings us back in the real world. The album as whole paint the image of a frozen forest that embraces the rays of a new dawn, knowing it was the last frost of the winter. And you just sit there, alone, on an old stump, and watch as the ice melts away and gives way to the buds that later become delicate flowers. Although, as you watch, a cold realization hits you: all this beauty will be gone again. It will be swallowed whole by the frigid winds again and even though you would like to enjoy this image forever, you know it is impossible and you come to the conclusion that there will always be an endless cycle of rebirth and death.

Before diving into “The Endless Endeavour”, I revisited the group’s self-titled debut to refresh my memory and also see how the band progressed. I can tell you right now that their latest effort feels like a coming of age. The songs are longer, more coherent and never rush things or drag them. The doom elements are well woven into the sound and the post-rock, or almost shoegaze moments, are very well placed. The production too is better and makes the album more spacious, it lets it breathe, but by no means, it is overly polished.

DRAWN INTO DESCENT managed to grow a lot and gave us a wonderful piece of extreme art that we all should stop, sit, take a deep breath and appreciate, because if you are going to rush this album, you will never understand its beauty. 8.5 Metal Gentleman